As Fate Would Have It
by I-survived-life
Summary: Grandpa Arthur had gone on and on about this muggle invention called an aeroplane, a death trap made out of metal that soared through the air. He had made it sound like an absolute fairy tale, but with the first hand experience that Roxanne had, she could assure anyone that asked that it most certainly was not.
1. Ma'am, your flight has been delayed

**"Ma'am, your flight has been delayed."**

Roxanne Weasley was completely clueless when it came to muggles and their complex contraptions. Yes, her Aunt Hermione was muggleborn, and yes, her Uncle Harry had been raised by muggles, but that didn't mean that she was surrounded by their telefusions or their phone calls, whatever those were. What she did know about, however, was aeroplanes because she was supposed to be sitting in one and it was supposed to be taking her across the ocean.

Instead, a lovely lady with a regretful look on her face, was telling her that her flight had been delayed. Roxanne would be the first to admit that she didn't know how these airports worked, but she knew the word "delayed" and she knew that she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

She was also very aware of the fact that if she didn't get on flight to England some time soon, her mum was going to kill her. She had missed the Christmas before that and the Christmas before that one, if she missed yet another Christmas, Roxanne was afraid that her mum was going to set a Venomous Tentacula on her. Her grandma Weasley had had to actually mail her jumper to her by owl.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that, could you repeat it for me?" Roxanne asked, leaning forwards.

"Ma'am, your flight has been delayed until the 26th of December," the lady repeated.

"That can't be possible," Roxanne said, shaking her head in denial. She could not be stuck in Toronto for two whole days. It had been difficult enough following the goddamn signs to her gate, and now she couldn't leave?!

"I'm afraid it is, the weather has made it impossible for any planes to take off and for the sake of everyone's safety, all flights have been cancelled until the 26th."

This was why Roxanne had never flown before. Aside from the fact that aeroplanes rumbled like they were about to explode any minute, the waiting time to actually get on the plane was an absolute nightmare, and then there was the problem of her ears popping because of the changing pressure as the plane went higher and higher.

Whenever she traveled via Floo Network or Portkey, there was never hours of waiting for a death trap to leave the ground. There were no delays because of weather conditions. And most importantly, Portkeys and the Floo never kept her stranded in Toronto for Christmas.

"What's wrong with the weather?"

"Ma'am, there is a blizzard going on outside," the woman replied.

"Nonsense, it's just some light flurries," Roxanne said dismissively.

"Ma'am," the woman said with a raised eyebrow. Roxanne took a good look out of the window behind the woman and sighed. Okay, so maybe it was a little bit more than just some slight flurries. If she were being honest, Roxanne could barely see anything that was five feet away from the window. It was all hidden behind the large white cloud that was lashing large snowflakes at the airport.

"Alright, is it possible for me to get a room in a hotel?" Roxanne asked with a sigh.

"I will let everyone know what is available as soon as I have helped everyone else waiting in line," the woman said. Roxanne sighed yet again and moved out of the way. She would ask about her suitcase later, Roxanne was pretty sure that everyone else behind her had grown frustrated with her. They didn't really care about how dead Roxanne would be when she showed up a day late to Christmas.

Roxanne looked around the crowded gate area and was only seconds away from bursting into tears. The place was filled to the brim with people sitting down in seats, or standing around with their carry on bags at their feet and playing on a small device that responded to their touch. Children ran around everyone's legs as they played tag or some other game, while mothers attempted to lull their babies to sleep. Instead of being surrounded by family, Roxanne was surrounded by complete strangers with looks on their faces that were just daring her to force them out of their seats.

Whenever she took a Portkey, there were no crowded rooms with angry people in them. Why? Well weather didn't affect Portkey's, they just took you directly where you needed to go.

Roxanne wandered around a bit before she finally managed to snag a small piece of wall next to the loo. She dumped her jacket on the ground to make herself comfortable, and then slid down the wall and joined the rest of the people that were sitting around and waiting for something to happen.

She watched the lady who had tried to help her go through customer after customer. The long line up slowly began to shorten until there was finally no one there. The lady then disappeared for about fifteen minutes. During that fifteen minutes, Roxanne checked her carry on bag to make sure that she hadn't forgotten anything throughout her traveling at any point. During that fifteen minutes, several people entered and exited the washroom, and Roxanne got a whiff of a particularly foul odour.

She was beginning to seriously regret the spot that she had chosen to sit in.

When the lady came back, Roxanne perked up, she just knew that the woman was going to announce plans on hotel arrangements. The woman picked up a small black piece of plastic that she held next to her ear—Roxanne assumed it was one of those tellyphones or whatever they were—and called for everyone's attention.

"As many of you know, all flights have been cancelled until December 26th due to weather conditions. I have looked into available hotel rooms, there are unfortunately not enough available for everyone, some of you will be spending your time at the airport. Please line up in an orderly line and I will attempt to help you in any way that I can," and then the lady put down her magic amplifier thing and waited for the chaos that would ensue as soon as her announcement was over.

Roxanne had never been more terrified before in her entire life. Never before had she seen people move so quickly to get into a line. It was as if a wave of humans suddenly rose to their feet and began to push around each other as they got as close to the front of the line that they possibly could. It was absolute madness, Roxanne was afraid to get up for fear of being pushed down by the mass of people and accidentally getting shoved into the men's toilet.

The noise level grew to the point where Roxanne couldn't even hear herself think anymore, and quite frankly, it was beginning to hurt her ears. Chairs were deserted as people moved about, many of them had bags placed on the seat to show that it was taken by someone. In the end, Roxanne finally got with the program and stood in line, near the very back.

She had a feeling that she would be one of the unlucky few stuck sleeping on airport chairs.

It had never been like this with magical transportation. It was quick and painless, Apparition being exempt from that list—but who really enjoyed Apparition in the first place anyway?—there was none of this painful waiting in line for one goddamn hour.

"I'm sorry, but unfortunately, all nearby hotel rooms have been completely filled," the lady told her with a polite smile.

This was some kind of joke, right?

Things could not have possibly been going this bad for Roxanne. There was just no way that what was happening to her was real, this isn't what she had paid hundreds of dollars for. This isn't the experience that she had in mind when she chose flying over Portkeys.

Roxanne looked around as people began emptying out of the place, many of them relieved to be able to get a room while others groaned and wandered back over to the belongings that they had abandoned. Roxanne went back over to her sad little spot on the wall next to the toilet and sat down. There was nothing that she could do until everyone left and things calmed down as those left behind picked an area for themselves.

There was always the option of Apparating to the embassy and setting up a Portkey instead of sitting around for two days, but that would require Roxanne to actually Apparate and she wasn't really in the mood to hurl all over ministry floors as soon as she arrived. Besides, she had spent a lot of money on her ticket and there was no way that she was just going to let it go to waste just because she couldn't handle sleeping in an airport.

Roxanne had planned on asking if she could at least have her suitcase but many employees filed out with the rest of the people and Roxanne was only left with what little she had in her carry on bag.

Roxanne may not have felt at home in a room crowded full of strangers, but now that she looked around at a deserted gate area, she would've preferred the crowd over the emptiness. Everything around her just screamed loneliness and sadness, not to mention it gave her the creeps how quiet it had gotten all of a sudden, and the raging storm outside wasn't helping matters either.

Roxanne thought about moving to a spot that was more comfortable, like a chair for example, but she spent almost an hour simply entertaining the idea instead of actually moving.

"Excuse me," someone said, tapping Roxanne on the shoulder. She came out of whatever daydream she had been in and turned her head to the left where the words were coming from. Roxanne came nose to nose with someone that had lovely, big brown eyes, full lips, and skin that was as dark as Roxanne's, but looked ten times softer. She was almost tempted to apologise for looking at someone that must've been a queen.

She tried to put some space between her and the new person but all that that resulted in was Roxanne slamming her back into the wall painfully. Her shoulder immediately began to ache as tingles went up her arm from where her elbow had made contact with the wall.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you!" the stranger exclaimed, and stood up. She stood with her hands on her hips and a grin on her face. Roxanne wasn't entirely sure whether she was being laughed at or not but she didn't really care, the throbbing in her shoulder was more important at the moment. She tried to massage it in order to make the pain go away but all that succeeded was in making her shoulder ache even more.

"S'alright," Roxanne said and climbed to her feet. She stretched her arms above her and sighed in relief as her muscles loosened up.

"Sorry, I just thought that I would remind you that the area is now empty so there's plenty of room for you to sit on a chair," the girl said. Roxanne could've sworn that she looked hopeful when she asked the question but she wasn't entirely sure. Whatever the girl was feeling, Roxanne would accept the offer of friendship, it was either that or entertain herself for the next two days, having someone to talk to would make her time a lot less painful.

"Thanks," Roxanne said as she lifted her bag and carried her jacket after the girl, who led the way back to her own things that she had abandoned in her spot.

Roxanne set down her things and took a seat next to the stranger.

"I forgot to introduce myself, my name is Alyssa," the girl said and held out a hand for Roxanne to shake.

"Roxanne, pleasure to meet you," Roxanne said, grasping the hand in her own and giving it a firm shake.


	2. 20 Questions

**20 Questions**

"You seemed really distressed to hear that your flight was cancelled, is there any reason why you want to go home so much?" Alyssa asked as she slipped off her shoes. She bent over and put them together before pushing them underneath her seat.

"Were you watching me?!" Roxanne exclaimed. She was in an airport so of course there would be people watching her but it still creeped her out.

"It's hard not to notice a woman bordering on hysteria," Alyssa pointed out dryly. Roxanne had to admit that she had a point, she had gotten so loud that her voice had begun to hurt even her own ears.

"Touchè," she said. She crossed her legs and sighed. "I transferred for work a few years ago, and I've missed Christmas with my family ever since I left. I tried to get back to them on time but something always came up and I had to stay behind." Alyssa nodded along sympathetically, which surprised Roxanne, but she was willing to bet that was mostly due to the fact that her cousins were not very sympathetic people. That same answer would've gotten her some smartass reply and a scoff.

"Well, anyway, my mum demanded that I show up for Christmas this year or else I'd be disowned by the family," Roxanne added this last part with an eye roll. Her mum hadn't actually said the words but an owl from her brother Fred had. She didn't realize exactly how much he had missed her until she got an owl tapping on her window furiously in the dead of night. The bird had been practically glaring at her.

Roxanne had been startled so much that she dove for her wand and nearly blasted a hole in her wall to keep out the intruder.

"Your family takes Christmas very seriously, doesn't it?" Alyssa asked, a small smile pulling at the edges of her mouth.

"Yeah, we're a really big family and Christmas is that time of the year where everyone gathers together and you can actually see people that you haven't spoken to in months. It's a nightmare too, something always goes wrong."

Christmas with the Weasley's was kind of like a science experiment, the results weren't what you always expected and things were prone to going wrong. It had gotten so bad that St. Mungo's actually had a set of Healers on hand in case something happened.

There was that time the Scamander twins were invited over and accidentally let loose a vicious plant that had a long, complicated name Roxanne couldn't pronounce. Almost everyone had had to be taken to St. Mungo's because the slime they had come into contact with had paralyzed them.

Needless to say, everyone was searched upon arrival at the Weasley's and there was a list of things banned from entering the house, one of them being unknown plants. It been a lovely surprise to get through Christmas relatively unscathed the first year that Roxanne was away from her family and relatives.

"Wish I could spend the holidays with all of my family," Alyssa said with a wistful sigh.

"Are you a small family?"

"No, we're pretty big but we're all scattered around the world so it's kind of hard to always get together," Alyssa said. Roxanne was beginning to understand that struggle first hand. Her family was well off, even if they had to go through this torturous muggle process of sleeping in airports, they had the money to buy tickets whenever they wanted, not everyone did. Not everyone got to fly out to be with family during the holidays.

"I'm sure your family will be okay if you miss Christmas this once, if you celebrate Christmas, that is" Roxanne said. It wasn't the most comforting thing that she could've said but Roxanne wasn't really built to deal with emotions that were not under the umbrella of happy.

"We don't really celebrate Christmas in my family, we're not the most festive of people. Sometimes we'll give each other presents, but usually we don't," Alyssa said with a shrug. She tried to pass it off as nothing but Roxanne could see the look of sadness on her face.

"Why not?"

"My parents just never saw any point to it, they didn't see it as practical, and we're not very religious people. We just don't celebrate it. I didn't really get a chance to believe in Santa Claus like everyone else," Alyssa said. If Alyssa's parents didn't celebrate Christmas because it wasn't practical, she hated to think how difficult it must've been for the girl to ask for things.

"That sounds like it really sucks, I'm sorry," Roxanne said, and put a hand on the girl's arm for support.

"It's okay," Alyssa replied. "The only thing that I'm sad about is the fact that I get back on Boxing Day, which is the worst, I won't be able to get a cab."

Roxanne wasn't sure what Boxing Day was, but she had noticed that there were a lot of muggles out and about on December 26th and she assumed that it had something to do with shopping. The importance of it beyond that, she wasn't entirely sure. A cab was something that she was familiar with, having ridden in one plenty of times, so she just nodded along as if she knew the struggle of catching a cab on Boxing Day.

"So what's been keeping you away from your family for so long?" Alyssa asked. She squeezed her hands into the crease between her calf and her thigh and gave Roxanne all of her attention.

"Healer's have the absolute worst times in the world, I don't know when I'm going to get called into work, and Christmas time is an absolute nightmare especially," Roxanne said. She realised a moment too late that she had let the word Healer slip out of her mouth. Her eyes widened considerably as Alyssa looked at her in confusion. She really needed to watch the words that were coming out of her mouth otherwise she would be in big trouble.

"What's a Healer?" Alyssa asked.

Great, she was a muggle. Why couldn't Roxanne catch a break and just ran into a witch instead. At least then the two of them would have something in common, but no it had to be a muggle. What was she going to talk to a muggle about? She knew nothing about them.

"It's someone who helps sick and injured people," Roxanne replied cringing. What she didn't add was that the type of injuries that she dealt with were very different from the ones that muggle Healers probably had to deal with. She was fairly certain that not many people walked into muggle hospitals complaining about dragon burns or with their heads stuck in cauldrons.

"So a doctor," Alyssa replied slowly.

"Yeah, sure, let's go with that," Roxanne agreed with a smile. She refused to talk anymore about what her job actually entailed, discussing long, inconsistent hours was one thing, talking about shoving a bezoar down someone's throat, not so much.

"So have you ever sent someone to surgery before?" Alyssa asked, curiosity taking over her face.

"Surgery?" Roxanne asked, frowning. She'd heard of surgery before but she wasn't entirely sure what it actually was. There were knives and humans involved but that was about all that she knew.

"You know, cutting someone open," Alyssa said, miming the action by dragging her hand through the air as if she was holding a scalpel.

"CUTTING SOMEONE OPEN?!" Roxanne claimed in horror. This is what surgery was?! Muggles actually cut each other open in order to fix each other?! How was this not illegal? You couldn't just cut someone open and let them bleed away, that was crazy?! How did anyone get cured of anything with muggles in charge?!

"Yeah, that's what surgery is, you're a doctor, you're supposed to know that," Alyssa said, suspicion written all over her face. Roxanne wasn't lying about helping people but Healers didn't cut people open.

"I have never sent anyone to surgery before or ever performed surgery," Roxanne replied. She was never going to put her life into the hands of muggle doctors. If she ever seriously hurt herself, she was going to yell out Healer and hope someone caught her drift and sent her to a magical hospital instead of a muggle one.

"Well that's good," Alyssa said nodding and the two of them lapsed into slightly awkward silence. Roxanne looked around her to avoid making eye contact with the girl and watched as the people several meters away from her making themselves comfortable in their seats.

"So what's with the twenty questions anyway?" Roxanne asked.

"Well if we're going to be stuck together until the 26th I figured it would be a good time for me to get to know you and make sure that you're not some criminal," Alyssa replied teasingly, but Roxanne could see how relieved she was for the silence to be broken.

"How do you know I'm not lying?" Roxanne asked with a raised eyebrow.

"You don't look like the sort to lie," Alyssa replied simply and shrugged.

"Looks can be deceiving," Roxanne pointed out.

"You're working really hard to make me suspicious of you, aren't you?" Alyssa asked. She didn't look all that wary of Roxanne, if anything, she seemed amused. Roxanne hadn't met anyone as friendly or as trusting as Alyssa in a very long time, but maybe this was just the Canadian way.

"I'm just sayin, you should be more cautious of people is all," Roxanne countered, putting her hands up in surrender.

"Roxanne, if you were a psychopathic killer, I'm fairly certain that you could've lured me away somewhere without cameras and done away with me, no problem," Alyssa pointed out.

"Well, if we're going to play twenty questions then I think I deserve my turn," Roxanne said. Had this been one of her close friends, she would've probably clapped her hands as she planned to ask the most embarrassing of questions.

"Seems fair," Alyssa said with a nod of her head.

"Okay, easy one, what kind of a job do you have?" Roxanne asked.

"Oh, I work for a publishing house," Alyssa replied easily.

"That's so cool!" Roxanne exclaimed. Her cousin Molly was also working for a publishing house but whenever Roxanne asked questions about her job, she became very tight-lipped about everything and refused to divulge any information. Even Lucy, who was an Unspeakable, was more vocal about her career than her sister. Sometimes Roxanne doubted whether Molly was even telling the truth, no one was that protective of information that involved publishing a book.

"I like to think it is, you would not believe how many submission we get every day. Some of them are so bad I begin to question my very existence because nothing could be written that poorly."

"What's one of the biggest things that you usually see?" Roxanne asked. She shoved her hands into her lap and leaned forward, her eyes wide with interest. Alyssa blushed under Roxanne's intent gaze, which wasn't that uncommon of a reaction to Roxanne. When Roxanne was interested by something, she gave it her full attention, and most people weren't used to that level of intensity.

"Gaping plot holes throughout the story, annoyingly perfect main characters and their lame romantic interests, a surprising amount of them were crowded with spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors which was quite alarming," Alyssa said grimacing. Her face scrunched up as she tried to remember other things. She counted everything that she had already said on her fingers and frowned. A split second later, Alyssa's face lit up as more problems came to her.

"Some of them had continuity errors, flat characters, stereotypes so painful that it physically hurt for me to read the manuscript. A lot of stories are just the same plots over and over with different characters to play them out, there's very little change. I try to pass on the stories that are different from the rest."

Roxanne had to agree that it could get a little boring reading the same thing over and over but after all, almost everything had been written already, you were bound to run into similar stories at this point.

"At least people are getting the recognition they deserve," Roxanne said.

"It's a lot harder than it sounds," Alyssa said with a sigh. "People want what sells, and that doesn't always mean good quality stories, or variety. After all, why bother changing a formula that has been proven to work?"

Roxanne could picture how difficult it must've been. The urge to approve something that was actually, really well-written, or to pass on the one that wasn't as well-written.

"Alright, do you have any siblings?"

"Nope, just an only child, but I've got lots of cousins," Alyssa said with a smile.

"Who are you closest to in your family?"

"My grandma on my mom's side, she's really funny," Alyssa said, and her face lit up as she thought of one of the jokes that her grandma had told her. "She's also got quite the dirty mind on her."

"Worst mark you've ever gotten in class?" Roxanne asked and almost slapped herself in the face. What was she supposed to say if Alyssa asked her the same question? "Oh yeah, I got an E in History of Magic." Yeah, that would go over well with the girl, she'd have to explain what an E meant and she was talking about History of Magic. It made her sound like she was a part of some sort of cult.

"Fifty-four percent," Alyssa said cringing.

That was pretty low, but Roxanne could relate, she knew the consequences of handing in an assignment last minute and getting a low mark on said assignment.

"In my defense, I was not prepared for the test at all, I was a little blindsided by it," Alyssa hurried on to say. "What about you?"

Roxanne didn't know what an E was but she remembered the number of questions on her History of Magic exam and an estimate of how many of them she had gotten wrong.

"I think it was something like eighty percent, I was so disappointed in myself," Roxanne replied with a sigh. All this talk of school was bringing her down, she did not want to think about all of the times that she had locked herself up in the toilets and cried her eyes out because she was just that stressed out and scared of failing.

Roxanne shook her head and reached to the ground for her bag. She dug around in the pockets of it for a little bit, pushing aside her glasses and her wand in order to find her deck of cards. She had been smart enough to pack her regular muggle pack of cards and left her Exploding Snap in her suitcase. She didn't want to have to make up an excuse for why her cards exploded at random.

She took the deck out of the box, fished out the jokers and began shuffling them.

"Enough about school, school sucked, let's play some cards," Roxanne said as the cards snapped in her hand. Alyssa instinctively leaned away from Roxanne, there was a dangerous glint in the girl's eye that was quite common to those that knew her. It usually meant that Roxanne was entering her competitive zone. And Roxanne in her competitive zone was a force to be reckoned with.

"O-kay," Alyssa said uncertainly.

"How familiar are you with the game of Cheat?"


	3. Cheat

**Cheat**

As it turned out, Alyssa did not know how to play Cheat. Roxanne had to explain the game several different ways, but no matter what she did, Alyssa looked as confused as ever. Roxanne had assumed that the girl would know what she was talking about, it was after all a muggle card game, it was a miracle that Roxanne even knew about it. Lily had had to teach her the game when the power went out in their house one time, and she had insisted on sitting in the dark like proper muggles instead of using magic to provide light. There was only so much you could do when your cousin insisted on no magic, learning a card game with almost no light sounded like a brilliant idea at the time.

"All right, let's try it this way," Roxanne said. She started to deal out the cards between her and Alyssa. If an explanation wasn't going to work then hands on experience would have to do. Once Roxanne had split the deck between the two of them, she picked up her cards and made sure that Alyssa couldn't see them.

"We're going to start off with aces, I'm going to say something like 'One ace,' and put a card down. The card I put down could either actually be an ace or a different card, you have to figure out whether I'm lying or not," Roxanne said and put down a card. Alyssa nodded along to what Roxanne was saying, a look of concentration on her face.

"Got it," Alyssa said.

"If you wanna call my cheat, you need to say 'Cheat,' if you're right, and I was lying, I pick up the card, or cards depending on how many there are in the pile. If you're wrong, and I wasn't lying, you have to pick up my card, and any other cards in the pile," Roxanne said.

"So if I'm at something like five for example, I can put down fives if I have them and say something like 'Two fives,' but if I don't, I could put down any cards and still claim they're fives," Alyssa said.

"Correct, I think you finally got it!" Roxanne exclaimed. She picked up her demonstration card and put it back in her hand.

She had never played Cheat with only two people before, she generally had plenty of cousins willing to play so the game got interesting. Roxanne wasn't sure if either her or Alyssa would win the game. They both had half the deck of cards in their hand, all it would take would be a quick look through their cards to figure out if the other was cheating.

This would take a while.

The game started out well enough, both girls had enough cards that they didn't have to call Cheat on each other. And then the two of them started running out of cards, and it became increasingly harder to figure out who was cheating. Roxanne eventually ended up with the majority of the deck of cards in her hands. Alyssa looked absolutely ecstatic to be winning at a game that she had only just learned to play. Roxanne was busy grumbling under her breath and flipping through her cards to see if she could call Cheat.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait," she said as she quickly scanned through her deck of cards.

"Roxanne, it's your turn," Alyssa pointed out.

"YOU CHEAT!" Roxanne yelled loudly and pointed at her new friend. Alyssa rolled her eyes at Roxanne's dramatics and picked up her card again.

"You need to quiet down, I don't want to annoy anyone else stuck in here," Alyssa said. She had her hand over her mouth and was giggling. And she wasn't wrong either, the small group of people sitting on the opposite side of their gate area kept glancing over at the two girls every time Roxanne got extremely passionate.

"Yes I'm sure it's quite difficult to get quiet in an empty airport," Roxanne replied sarcastically. They hadn't gone unnoticed by her, but unlike Alyssa, she thought the looks on their faces had been one of envy rather than annoyance. After all, Roxanne was keeping herself busy, they didn't seem to be doing the same.

"Roxanne," Alyssa said.

"They can either sit over there and mope, or they can come over here and play cards with us," Roxanne said. She got to her feet and made her way over to the strangers in a flash, completely ignoring the pleas coming from Alyssa.

Roxanne was surprised at how bold she was being, she wasn't one to approach strangers and invite them to play a nice game of cards with her, that sounded more like something up her brothers ally. And yet here she was, marching purposefully towards complete strangers.

Besides, it would make the game more interesting.

"Hey there," Roxanne said waving. She crouched down next to the group that was sitting on the ground. It was really only four people, three fourths of them being boys with different shades of brown hair and one girl with fire engine red spiky hair.

"Hi," the girl spoke up once it was clear that none of the boys would offer a greeting.

"Me and my friend over there were wondering if you guys would be willing to play cards with us?" Roxanne asked with what she hoped was a bright friendly smile. She wasn't an expert when it came to making friends with strangers, her friendly smiles were often described as grimaces.

Roxanne looked behind her to Alyssa, who was making a slicing motion across her neck with a panicked look on her face. Roxanne winked at her and gave a thumbs up, to which Alyssa replied with a face palm.

The four of them came together, their arms going over each other's shoulders as they whispered together and thought out their decision. Roxanne was left waiting for almost two minutes, by which point she was tired of the whispering going on and was about to take back her offer. It was a game of cards for crying out loud, she wasn't asking them to go on a super secret mission.

"All right, we'll play with you," the girl finally spoke up. Roxanne sighed in relief and got to her feet. The strangers followed behind her in a single file.

When Roxanne got back with their new friends, Alyssa was busy shuffling the deck of cards. Roxanne took a seat next to her and gave her a sharp poke to the shoulder.

"Alyssa, these are our new friends," Roxanne said, motioning to the four new members of their game.

"Alex," the girl with the spiky red hair said, holding out a hand.

"Anjo," one of the boys with the brown hair added. He had on funky glasses which kept sliding down his nose. Roxanne was tempted to take out her wand and glue the boys glasses to his face.

"Dirk," another added. Roxanne worked hard not to grimace, the brown hair clashed horribly with the neon pink shirt that he was wearing, which was extremely inappropriate considering the weather outside. Roxanne wanted to make a joke about how Dirk was a trolls name but she was fairly certain that in muggle society that was considered rude.

"Sam," the last one added. Out of the four of them, the last one was probably the most normal looking. Yes, he did have on a pageboy hat and was wearing a bow tie, along with a black vest, but a hipster was better than looking like he'd grabbed the closest thing to him when he woke up.

Roxanne was beginning to think that she really didn't need to be so judgemental of people's clothing. As long as they were happy then who was she to judge. Although judging by the sour look on Sam's face, he didn't seem very happy.

"Do you know what Cheat is?" Roxanne asked.

"Yes," they all answered.

"Oh thank God," Roxanne said in relief as Alyssa began to deal out the cards to everyone in the circle.

"Hey!" she exclaimed with a glare towards Roxanne.

It was Christmas Eve and Roxanne was sitting in an airport, surrounded by strangers, playing a muggle card game instead of being with her family and drinking some hot chocolate.

The game started out well enough, no one was yelling and everything was moving quickly. And then things escalated. Just like Roxanne knew that it would. It only took about fifteen minutes before someone ended up with half the deck in their hands as they yelled, "WAIT!" and flipped through their cards. Pretty soon, swears were flying all over the place, playing cards were slammed down with more force than necessary, and Alyssa had even gotten up and left at one point.

Everyone guarded their cards and eyed each other suspiciously as they went around the circle. Roxanne was winning out of everyone, and she could see people slowly coming to the conclusion of ganging up on her and ruining her.

"Feel better?" Roxanne asked when Alyssa had come back. She seemed a lot calmer than before and picked up right where she left off.

"I've never played a game this intense before," Alyssa said as she put down her own two cards.

"Oh this is nothing," Roxanne said dismissively.

"You've had games worse than this?!" Alyssa asked as Sam picked up his card again after Anjo called his cheat.

"Oh yeah, my cousins are much worse."

"How much worse?" Alyssa asked skeptically.

"We almost set the house on fire by accident one time," Roxanne replied nonchalantly. It was what they got for using Exploding Snap cards near a curtain.

"CHEAT!" Roxanne yelled, pointing at Alex, who cursed and picked up the card that she had just put down.

The game went on and on, round after round. Roxanne won quite a few games, but not nearly as many as she would have wanted to, Alyssa turned out to be quite the threat and took in quite a few games herself for a first timer, a fact that she wouldn't let Roxanne forget no matter how much she insisted on beginner's luck. Alex ended up winning the most games out of anyone, Sam lost the most out of all of them, and Anjo and Dirk weren't too bad either.

The storm outside seemed as if it had gotten even more aggressive and worse as time had gone on. It got darker and darker throughout the day, Roxanne wasn't sure what the time was, she was too busy rolling on the floor laughing at the pout on Sam's face as Anjo and Dirk teased him shamelessly for the fact that he had lost so many games of Cheat.

"It's almost eleven guys, I don't know about you but I'm going to get comfortable and fall asleep," Alyssa said with a yawn. She raised her arms in the air and stretched until she heard a slight crack in her joints before rising to her feet. She spread out her jacket across the seats that she had occupied, wrapped herself up as much as she could, and closed her eyes.

Alex, Anjo, Dirk, and Sam got to their feet grumbling as they did. They thanked Roxanne for inviting them to play cards and headed back over to their things. Roxanne couldn't hide her own yawn and packed up her things as quickly as she could.

She put away her deck of cards, laid out her jacket next to Alyssa's dozing form, and made a makeshift pillow out of the little clothing that she had packed in her bag. She lay down, bag held securely in her arms and pulled her large jacket over her. Little by little, Roxanne fell asleep, and the last thing she remembered seeing was the snowstorm outside of the airport.


	4. I Woke Up Like This

When Roxanne woke up in the morning, she was very confused. She knew exactly where she was, and she remembered perfectly the events of the day before, she simply didn't know what time of day it was. She knew that she hadn't woken up for no reason, she didn't have to pee, so the only conclusion that she could come to was that she had slept her needed eight hours and her body was ready for the day.

But it sure didn't look like it was past four in the morning. It was grey outside, so dark that Roxanne could've sworn that she hadn't slept for more than two or three hours. She turned her head to look around, blinking the sleep out of her eyes and forcing her mind to focus as she did so.

She reached over and nudged Alyssa to see if she was awake.

"Five more minutes and then I'll go to school," Alyssa mumbled in her sleep and then turned over. Roxanne couldn't help but smile at how cute her new friend was.

"Alyssa, wake up, what's the time?" Roxanne whispered loudly.

"Ergh, phone in bag, go away," she grumbled and swatted away Roxanne's hand. Roxanne groped around for Alyssa's bag and yanked it towards her when she caught hold of it.

"Ouch!" Alyssa yelped as her strap whacked her in the face as her bag flew by.

"Sorry!" Roxanne exclaimed.

"Why do you hate me?" Alyssa groaned and covered her face.

Roxanne finally found something that she assumed was Alyssa's phone. She held the object in one hand and poked her friend with the other.

"Is it this one?"

"Yes," Alyssa said and covered her face again.

Roxanne frowned down at the rectangular object sitting in her palm. It was smooth and dark, reflecting her confused face back to her. There was one button on the surface at the bottom, another at the top of the phone, and two more on the left side. Roxanne wasn't an idiot, these phone things had numbers on them to press so you could contact people.

But where were the numbers?

Roxanne turned the thing over a few times and bit her lip as she became more and more confused by the thing she was holding. She tried slapping it and hitting it against her hand but nothing happened. She wanted to ask Alyssa for help but that would only attract attention to the fact that Roxanne was painfully clueless to muggle things.

Well, even more attention.

It finally occurred to her that hey, those buttons were there for a reason. Roxanne pressed the one on the surface and almost dropped the phone as it lit up before her and gave her the time. She couldn't seem to stop staring at the screen, it seemed so futuristic to her, she'd never seen anything like it.

At the bottom it said to swipe to the right. Roxanne looked at Alyssa to make sure she wasn't watching before putting a finger to the screen and swiping right. She gasped when the screen responded to her touch and a bunch of numbers replaced the date and time.

"Well, what time is it?" Alyssa asked.

"Er, erm," Roxanne said as panic began to set in again. Shit. This was not going well. She had to take a deep breath and tell herself to stay calm before focusing on the phone again. If swiping right brought up the numbers, then swiping left would put it back to what it originally was.

"Oh, it's ten thirty," Roxanne said, sighing in relief.

"What? It's completely dark outside, it can't be," Alyssa replied, shooting into an upright position. She snatched the phone out of a surprised Roxanne's hands and checked the time herself.

"Oh God, I haven't slept that late in a long time," Alyssa said rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and yawning.

"Wish I had some toothpaste with me but oh well, hygiene can wait until tomorrow. But for now, breakfast is in order, come on," Alyssa said. She threw off her coat and stretched out her limbs before gathering up her things. Roxanne hurried to keep up with her and ran after the girl who was walking off in an unknown direction.

"We're going to have breakfast?" Roxanne puffed once she'd caught up.

"Yep, and that means Tim Hortons, follow me," Alyssa said with a grin.

And when they finally managed to track down a Tim Hortons, it became very apparent that plenty of other people were thinking along the same lines as Alyssa. The lineup was incredibly long. Roxanne was worried she would be stuck in the lineup for an hour before getting served.

Which brought up another problem, Roxanne wasn't sure she had packed any muggle money before leaving her home. While she and Alyssa stood in line for their turn, she dug through the pockets of her bag before pulling out her wallet and looking through it. She sighed when she saw that she had a green twenty dollar bill, a purple ten dollar in it, and a blue five dollar bill with a few toonies and loonies thrown in.

The money seemed pretty straight forward, Roxanne knew the paper was dollars, and judging from the writing on the toonies and loonies, they were also dollars, and the smaller coins were cents. She could do this, she could do this.

Now she just had to figure out how to order.

"Alyssa, how do I order?" Roxanne asked quietly. She didn't want to attract attention to her ignorance.

"You've never been to Tim Hortons?" Alyssa asked surprised. Roxanne shook her head, she preferred to surround herself in magic considering how absolutely useless she was when it came to muggles and their complex technology.

"Do you drink coffee?"

"'Course," Roxanne replied. Who didn't? How were you supposed to function in the morning and tolerate people without coffee?

"How do you take it?"

"Three cream, three sugar," Roxanne replied promptly.

"Damn, that's sweet, anyway, do you have any aversion to meat or meat by products?"

"Not at all."

"Great, leave the rest to me," Alyssa said with a smile.

"You'll tell me how much I owe you, right?" Roxanne asked anxiously. She had never been very comfortable with people buying her things. It made her really uncomfortable when she would jokingly ask her friends for things and they would actually buy it for her. Roxanne came from a wealthy family, she was never short of money to buy anything and to her it felt like asking others to buy her something when she could afford it as selfish.

"Sure," Alyssa said.

Roxanne had never seen employees look so harassed before in her life. They were all rushing around filling out orders as fast as they possibly could, the thing fuelling them being the fact that they wanted to get rid of everyone as fast as possible. And Roxanne felt bad for adding to their list of customers, but she didn't know where else to go and she was hoping that she wouldn't be too much of a burden.

Luckily for Roxanne, Alyssa knew exactly what to do, and within a few minutes of putting in their order, the two of them were walking away with breakfast sandwiches in one hand and coffees in the other.

The two of them spent a quiet morning together. They ate their breakfast and drank their coffees and talked about anything and everything. Alyssa went on about the movies that she loved, which Roxanne had never seen but she liked how excited Alyssa got when she spoke about the things that she genuinely enjoyed. Roxanne told her about some of her favourite books, which she didn't bother lying about, Alyssa would just assume that it some made up novel anyhow, why even bother? And besides, Alyssa wouldn't make fun of her for her choices, her cousins barely let her finish a sentence.

"Those sound so interesting, too bad they're fake," Alyssa said with a laugh.

"Ha ha ha," Roxanne gave the most false laugh that she could muster. "Fake, right."

Alyssa took out her phone and managed to get the airports wifi working before sidling up closer to Roxanne and shoving the phone in her face. Roxanne wasn't sure what wifi was but if sounded important judging from the whoops coming from Alyssa.

"Er, what are you doing?" Roxanne asked, her head tilted backwards and away from the screen that was so close to her face.

"Well, since I can use the wifi, I figured we could watch something," Alyssa said brightly. "Any preferences?"

Roxanne shook her head.

"Alright then, I'll pick something," Alyssa said. Within a few minutes, she had pulled up a site and had begun the video.

"What's this about?" Roxanne asked.

"It's this show about this man called the Doctor who travels through time and saves the world with his companion in a big blue police box, which is really a time machine," Alyssa said brightly. Roxanne was afraid she would come across as weird yet again but Alyssa didn't even blink an eye, it seemed after only one day and the girl had already gotten used to Roxanne and her lack of muggle knowledge.

"A police box?" Roxanne asked skeptically.

"Oh, it's bigger on the inside," Alyssa appended.

"And this is successful?" Roxanne asked. It didn't really sound like much, she was fairly certain that the Department of Mysteries was probably working on something like this.

"Oh yeah."

"It doesn't really sound all that interesting, I think my cousins department at the ministry is doing something like this," Roxanne said thoughtfully. Alyssa burst out laughing at that, although Roxanne wasn't quite sure what was so funny, she was being perfectly serious.

"You're so funny Roxanne," Alyssa said.

"I am?"

"Of course, someone tried to create the TARDIS at your school, that's hilarious," Alyssa said with a grin and a slap to Roxanne's back.

Right. Muggles didn't normally create travelling time boxes as experiments or by accident. She could see what the joke was now.

Roxanne decided to shut up from that point on and just watch what was playing on Alyssa's phone. She was amazed at how something so incredibly small could contain so much information and power in it. Muggles were truly amazing, she didn't understand why wizards still insisted on living in the Middle Ages while the rest of the world had moved forward.

It was almost three hours of just watching the one show, which Roxanne had to admit, was in fact pretty interesting and entertaining, before Alyssa had to turn her phone off and find somewhere to plug her charger in.

"What do you wanna do now?" Roxanne asked in the silence.

"Do you have any of those books that you talked about?" Alyssa asked, perking up.

"No, they're all in my suitcase," Roxanne replied glumly. She was pretty sure showing a muggle some of her school textbooks probably violated the Statute of Secrecy but really what was going to happen? It's not as if Alyssa would've believed what she was reading anyway.

"Bummer," she said sagging in disappointment. "I've got an idea."

"Alright, let's hear it, then," Roxanne said. Anything would be better than sitting in total silence. The only other option that Roxanne could see for conversation was serious talks that would lead to talks about feelings and Roxanne didn't do feelings, it was why she became a Healer. It didn't require feelings, just knowledge. Although to be fair, she didn't exactly mind the warm, tingly feeling inside of her whenever Alyssa smiled.

"It's this game I used to play when I was a little girl with my friends. What you do is you take off your shoes, put them in a pile, and then you split up into two teams and the leader has to figure out whose shoes are whose, grab them, bring them back to their team and everyone has to shove them on as fast as they can," Alyssa said.

"There's only two of us so teams aren't really an option," Roxanne pointed out.

"True, but we can throw in stuff like jackets and sweaters along with the shoes to make it more interesting," Alyssa pointed out.

Roxanne wasn't crazy about the idea but it was either this or nothing, so she went along with it. She gathered up everything that she had and threw it in a pile along with Alyssa's stuff and slipped off her boots. She and Alyssa stood an equal distance from the pile and faced each other.

"GO!" Alyssa yelled and practically dove for the pile of clothing. She either dug through it or just grabbed the first thing that she could find and started shoving it on. Roxanne hurried to catch up with her friend but was having trouble squeezing into a sweater that was one size too small.

Definitely not hers.

For something that was a children's game, it was strangely addictive and brought out the competitiveness in Roxanne that usually only came out when she was at a Quidditch game. Her uncles claimed to have never seen anyone get as angry during a match as Roxanne. Not to mention foul-mouthed.

The game went on and on, and by the time that they had exhausted that childish game, Roxanne was spread-eagled on the floor wearing a sweater that was squeezing her boobs, boots that were pinching her feet, and gasping for air because she had been laughing too hard.

She looked like she was trying to wear the clothes that she had when she was thirteen and just hitting puberty.

"I think this is enough for one day," Roxanne said and tugged the sweater over head and drew her arms out. She flung it to Alyssa, who in turn lobbed her own boots at Roxanne's face.

"What do you say to some good old-fashioned sock slides?" Roxanne asked once she had gotten back all of her property.

"You are a genius."

And for the next two hours, the girls slipped and slid across the airport on their socks and held onto each other for balance. They finally stopped their sock slides once Roxanne's stomach gave a loud gurgle. Alyssa immediately pulled out her wallet and started walking away.

"Where are you going?!" Roxanne yelled after her retreating figure.

"To get us some dinner, wait here!" Alyssa yelled and then she was gone. Roxanne meanwhile put her shoes back not, grimacing at how dirty her socks now were and very aware of the dirt and germs stuck to the soles of her feet.

Alyssa was back within a few minutes, her hands overflowing with food, which she put down in front of Roxanne before taking her own seat across from her new friend.

"I still owe you for breakfast," Roxanne said through a mouthful of food.

"Don't worry about it," Alyssa said waving her off.

"I insist."

"Seriously, don't worry about it," Alyssa said.

"if you say so."

They ate in comfortable silence for a while. And then Roxanne didn't know why but she started talking about her family and the many disasters that went on during Christmas time and pretty much any other holiday. The abridged version of course but still, it felt nice to be able to tell someone about how crazy her family was.

It made Roxanne feel even better when Alyssa laughed in all the right places and actually listened to her. Roxanne remembered how she would tell these exact same things to her friends, at some point they had become immune and weren't even surprised when she told them the stories, just nodded and went about their business.

It was nice to have an audience, it made her feel less boring than she thought she was.

"Your family sounds absolutely amazing," Alyssa said with a wistful sigh. "I wish my family was half as interesting as yours."

"Well, maybe next year you can come and spend Christmas with me," Roxanne blurted out without thinking. Her eyes widened considerably when her offer registered with her brain. Oh Lord, what had she done? She thought Alyssa was gorgeous and funny and kind but when she pictured asking her out, this wasn't exactly what she had in mind.

"Why, Roxanne, are you asking little ol' me out?" Alyssa asked, holding a hand to her chest.

"Depends," Roxanne replied coolly.

"On?"

"Whether or not you're going to say yes."

"Yes," Alyssa said with a grin.

"Great!" Roxanne exclaimed. Wait until her family heard that she was going out on a date.

"How about we set up a date after New Year's?" Alyssa asked. "What's your phone number?"

"Erm, how about you give me your number and I'll call you," Roxanne blurted out. "My phone broke and I haven't had a chance to get a new one."

"Alright," Alyssa said and searched her bag for a pen. She quickly wrote down her number on Roxanne's left forearm. "But you better call or I'm going to hunt you down myself."

Roxanne wasn't sure whether to take that seriously or not. Had it come from her cousins, she wouldn't have doubted for a second that they were serious and capable of doing such a thing, Alyssa however? She wasn't so sure about that.

It got even darker outside, which Roxanne hadn't even realised was possible, but at least it looked like the storm was slowly beginning to clear up.

The two girls decided to go to sleep early considering their flight was leaving at eight the next morning. Alyssa took her phone off of the charger and packed it away, but not before setting an alarm and then she and Roxanne set up their jackets just like yesterday before settling down to sleep.

Roxanne was the first one up the next morning, which was just as well considering the airport was bustling with people. Roxanne quickly shook Alyssa awake before smoothing out her hair and packing up her stuff. Alyssa checked her phone through sleepy eyes before packing up her own things.

They grabbed a breakfast while they waited for the half hour left before they were supposed to board. Roxanne checked to make sure that she was supposed to be on the flight leaving and only relaxed when her boarding pass got checked and she was sitting in her seat.

Unfortunately for Roxanne, she was not going to be spending the ride sitting next to her hopefully-soon-to-be girlfriend but she wasn't going to let that drag down her good mood. She may have missed Christmas, but she still had New Year's, that was better than nothing.

Roxanne spent most of the flight fast asleep, which she figured was better than holding onto her seat for dear life through all of the turbulence and thinking that she was going to die any moment. Admittedly, she did have to use the bathroom, which only intensified her feelings of terror. She couldn't help but think how ridiculous it would be to die in an aeroplane lavatory.

She couldn't stomach any snacks, otherwise she would've made very good use of those paper bags provided in case she needed to throw up. And when the plane finally touched down and Roxanne got off, she was only seconds away from kissing the ground that she walked on.

She expected her parents, brother, as well as the rest of her extended family to be waiting for her when she got off the plane, but instead, all that Roxanne found was her cousin Lily, who was glaring at her with crossed arms.

For someone five foot four, Lily was an incredibly intimidating figure.

Roxanne ran over to Lily and grabbed her by shoulders. "Lily, I need a cellular device."

"Wow, it's great to see you too Roxanne, I'm fine, thanks for asking. You are so very welcome for coming to pick you up and yeah, it's been a really long time," Lily said sarcastically.

"Hi, yeah, missed you lots, I need a cellular device," Roxanne said.

"You mean a cell phone?"

"Yes, exactly, hi Alyssa!" Roxanne exclaimed, hand jumping to her head as Alyssa popped out of nowhere.

"Hey Roxanne, just wanted to see you before I left and make sure that you didn't forget to call me," Alyssa said with a grin.

"Promise I won't forget," Roxanne replied making an X over her heart.

"See ya!" Alyssa said and then walked away.

"Oooooohhhhh," Lily said with a devilish grin and a cross of her arms.

"Don't."

"Roxanne."

"Shut up."

"I see you kept yourself busy," Lily went on.

"There was nothing else to do in the airport—" Roxanne started defensively.

"Except _who _to do."

"Lily."


End file.
